By Tim Elliott
Behold the saltwater croc! That rot-gummed belly-crawler, that grinning monster-saurus, dragging itself from the Stygian depths of prehistory, trailing the vegetal funk of hot swamps and ancient slime. Behold their skull-cracking jaws and double-chambered stomachs, bubbling with gastric juices like battery acid. Behold, also, the way they eat rocks – actual rocks – partly for ballast, but mainly so they can grind up the crunchier bits of their prey – bones, bird bills, turtle shells – digesting every last micronutrient before expelling what remains as a fine puff of faecal mist, a desultory squirt into the river murk that dissolves in an instant, gone forever, like a footprint in the sand, or last night’s margarita.
Wildman Wilderness Lodge is an unforgettable experience, its safari tents perched on timber platforms, with thick dun-coloured canvas “walls”.Credit: Wildman Wilderness Lodge
In this part of the Northern Territory, there are 80 saltwater crocodiles per square kilometre.
I know this because Ralph, my guide, just told me. It’s 6.30am, and Ralph is taking me to see Home Billabong on a flat-bottomed launch. Ralph is from Wildman Wilderness Lodge, a luxury glamping operation in the remote Mary River region. It’s dawn, and a chill mist clings like smoke to the surface of the water. As with many people in outback Australia, Ralph shows a reluctance to open his mouth when he talks, but he is full of information on, for instance, the wingspan of the white-bellied sea eagle (two metres plus), the way the Jesus bird is called the Jesus bird because it appears to walk on water; and most importantly, what time breakfast ends back at the lodge (9:30am). Fresh baked croissants and eggs benedict. Such are the rigours of Top End glamping.
Glamping - or glamorous camping – has been a thing for a while now. But it has come into its own in the past 10 years, embraced by a generation whose love of the environment is matched only by their enthusiasm for Clare Valley rieslings and 600-thread-count bedsheets. Australia offers some of the best glamping in the world, thanks to our ability to provide remote locations with First-World luxuries. But for the ultimate Aussie glamping it’s hard to beat Kakadu National Park.
At 20,000 square kilometres, Kakadu is Australia’s largest land-based national park, an ecological fantasia of waterfalls, floodplains and monsoonal woodlands. Kakadu, which celebrated its 40th anniversary as a national park this year, is one of the world’s few parks which is dual World Heritage-listed for both its natural and cultural values. Indigenous people have been here for 65,000 years, and are integral to its significance.
Kakadu is three hours’ drive south-east of Darwin on the Arnhem Highway, past mango farms and termite mounds. Wildman is one of the first lodges we come to, in the Mary River National Park, on the edge of Kakadu. Set 40 minutes’ drive off the highway, Wildman consists of 10 free-standing cabins and 15 glamping tents, plus a high-end restaurant, and a bar and reading area, all a short walk from Home Billabong and a vast wetland. The lodge has its own bush runway, where a single-engine five-seater Cessna awaits, ever ready to take guests on scenic flights.
There’s also an infinity pool, where you can sip cocktails while watching said Cessna take off and land, just 40 metres away.
Wildman consists of 10 free-standing cabins and 15 glamping tents, plus a high-end restaurant, and a bar and reading area.
But best of all are the safari tents, which are perched on timber platforms, with thick dun-coloured canvas “walls”, mosquito mesh windows, a writing desk and camp chairs on your private deck. It’s just like Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, except with en suite.
Wildman only became a glamping operation in 2009. In the 1970s it was a shooting safari camp, and before that, a cattle station. Early settlers came here in the 1880s, to farm, hunt buffalo or raise cattle. According to Danny Sinn, one of Wildman’s guides, the first pastoralists often used local Aborigines as forced labour. “If the blackfellas didn’t want to work, the whites just shot them,” says Sinn, who is white but was raised by her father and an Aboriginal woman after her birth mother left. “Some of the blackfellas ran away, so the station masters would deputise other blackfellas to go out and get them.” The deputies were traitors, says Sinn. “The blackfellas used to call them the Bullymen.”
After Wildman, I drive west along the Arnhem Highway toward Jabiru township. The speed limit on the highway is 130 kilometres per hour, the same as the German autobahn. After a brief stop in Jabiru, I head south to Nourlangie Rock, site of some of Australia’s most remarkable Indigenous rock art. Nourlangie is a little like Uluru, both for the way it rises up so abruptly from the flatness of its surrounds, and also for the raw weight of its presence, for the forbidding, numinous energy that radiates from it like a subsonic frequency. It’s spooky.
Riven with fissures and caverns, Nourlangie is also home to dozens of rock art galleries, including, most notably, a wall featuring Namarrgon the lightning man, a spindly figure who wears lightning as a band connecting his arms, legs and head; stone axes on his knees and elbows make the thunder. Nearby is another drawing, of Nabulwinjbulwinj, a spirit who strikes and kills women with a yam, and eats them. Namarrgon and Nabulwinjbulwinj stare at you as much as you stare at them. You get the sense that they like to be alone.
The newest glamping addition to Kakadu is at Cooinda Lodge, about 45 minutes’ drive south of Nourlangie Rock. Located next to Yellow Water Billabong, Cooinda opened as a campground for 20 people in 1984, but has since morphed into a sprawling village that can take up to 1000 people across a range of accommodation options, including tents, caravans and cabins. The newly installed glamping area, called Dreaming@Home Billabong, consists of 20 luxury tents, each on a wooden platform, located beside a pretty stand of melaleucas. Cooinda has a pool, bar, and bistro, and even a petrol station. (Ah, the serenity!)
I swim across and sit under the waterfall, then crawl up onto a flat, sun-warmed rock and fall asleep.
Cooinda’s real assets are its plentiful wildlife (a tour of Yellow Water Billabong is a must), and its guides, who offer a range of walks and 4WD tours. On our second day here, our guide, a lanky, laconic man called Tim, drives us to Gunlom, an escarpment on top of which are a series of freshwater pools. (You may recognise the place: some scenes in Crocodile Dundee were filmed here.)
In the afternoon, we head to Maguk, a jade-green pool, about 60 metres across, fed by a waterfall on the far side. The water is sweet and fresh, and surprisingly cold. I swim across and sit under the waterfall, then crawl up onto a flat, sun-warmed rock and fall asleep.
Our last stop is Matt Wright’s Top End Safari Camp. A 90-minute drive south of Darwin, the camp is hidden in the Finnis River system: you’d never be able to find it, so the company drives you here from Darwin. Wright is something of a legend in the NT; he’s written a book, and has his own TV show called Outback Wrangler. Not surprisingly, his lodge offers some of the most radical outdoor activities in the Top End. In 24 hours here, we take a high-speed hovercraft tour of Sweets Lagoon, and a hair-raising spin in a doorless helicopter that shaves the treetops and banks, repeatedly, at 45 degrees, followed by a sideways landing on a handkerchief-sized pontoon in a lagoon full of salties.
After dinner, my adrenal glands wrung dry, I retire to my tent, which resembles a yurt, only much more civilised, with a double bed and toiletries stand. Each tent features a gravity-fed outdoor shower with corrugated-iron walls, the water warmed by the sun. It’s absurdly atmospheric. That night, beyond my yurty cocoon, the sky is fathomless black, the stars like spilt sugar. I can hear nothing but crickets and the rustling of random creatures making whoopee in the bush.
The next morning, after eggs and bacon, we board a minibus back to Darwin. My head is sore, thanks to last night’s beers. It’s hot and bright. My mouth is dry. I think of Maguk, and its cool, clear water. I’m tempted to ask the bus driver to take a detour and drop me off, but the camp has another group coming in from Darwin, and there’s no time.
The writer travelled to Kakadu courtesy of Tourism NT.
Wildman Wilderness Lodge
2393 Point Stuart Rd, Point Stuart; (08) 8978 8955; wildmanwildernesslodge.com.au
Wildman Wilderness Lodge.Credit: Tourism NT/Adrian Brown
THE LOCATION About 33 kilometres off the Arnhem Highway, Wildman is set on a private dirt road on the edge of the Mary River Wetlands. It’s super-remote. You can drive here in four hours from Darwin, or fly in 20 minutes. (There’s a private bush runway.)
THE PLACE There are 10 freestanding cabins and 15 glamping tents, the latter the most atmospheric option. Set on timber platforms at a discreet distance from one another, the tents are large, fan-cooled, and have thick canvas sides that flap gently in the night breeze. All have en suites.
THE EXPERIENCE The lodge faces west towards stands of melaleuca and the vast Mary River wetlands. Kangaroos graze between the tents at sunset, and the bird life is extraordinary. There is also an infinity pool, and a good restaurant with excellently trained staff. The Lodge is closed from December to March.
DON’T MISS Take a dawn tour of Home Billabong, or visit Ubirr, one of Kakadu’s best Aboriginal rock art sites. The thick monsoonal forest at nearby Brian’s Creek makes for a fantastic walk.
FROM $675 a night for the tents, including breakfast and a three-course dinner. - Tim Elliott
Squeaky Windmill
971 Ilparpa Rd, Alice Springs; squeakywindmill.com
Squeaky Windmill, Alice Springs.
THE LOCATION A 10.5-hectare property about 15 kilometres outside Alice Springs. Owners Michelle Koerner and Robert Averay moved here from Adelaide in 1987, determined to stay “only a couple of years”. They put three glamping tents on the property in 2015, with Robert assuring Michelle “no one will ever come”.
THE PLACE Apart from its delightful hosts and fun name (the windmill no longer squeaks, but Michelle is hoping to rectify that), the highlight is the red rock escarpment that runs in front of the tents. Part of the MacDonnell Ranges, it turns iridescent with the setting sun. The tents are very comfortable, each featuring a queen bed, split-system air conditioning, en suite, kitchenette, barbecue and TV – not that you’re likely to turn on the latter.
THE EXPERIENCE With roos milling about and birds flying in the white gums, this is a great alternative to a run-of-the-mill hotel in Alice. Buy one of Michelle’s dinner hampers for a gourmet barbecue – and wine, as she’s just got her liquor licence. It’s open mid-March to mid-October, and discourages children under 10.
DON’T MISS Toasting marshmallows over the firepit after dinner.
FROM $175 a night including breakfast. - Kate Simmons
TO READ WHILE YOU’RE HERE by Nicole Abadee
Peter Goldsworthy’s Maestro, and Alexis Wright's Tracker.Credit:
If you’re planning a visit to Darwin, Peter Goldsworthy’s short 1989 debut novel, Maestro, will get you in the mood. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, it’s the coming-of-age story of 15-year-old Paul, a gifted pianist who moves with his family to Darwin. Goldsworthy captures both the exotic nature of the city and its sensuality. Alexis Wright won the 2018 Stella Prize for Tracker, her genre-busting biography of Indigenous Northern Territory activist and economist “Tracker” Tilmouth. Wright interviewed more than 50 friends, family members, colleagues, politicians and others chosen by Tracker to tell his story.
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